Waiting for Klaus: Act Two; Starring: Klaus Václav; Klaus holds Europe in check because of Lisbon; It’s Václav Klaus’s move now – these and similar headlines comparing the Czech President to an actor, a theatre director, screen writer, and a chess player flooded newspapers after Ireland ratified the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum held last Friday. The EU’s attention is now set on Václav Klaus.
>>> The Czech premier boarded his plane twice, but didn’t get to Barroso anyway. Due to a plane defect, Jan Fischer met on Wednesday with the Commission President José Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in a teleconference instead of in Brussels. Fischer promised to the EU the Czech Republic would complete the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of the year.
>>> Brussels is frowning at the Czech Republic. Because of the deficit, Lidové noviny’s headline said on Thursday, as the Czech budget deficit will highly exceed the EU limit of 3% of GDP this year.
>>> Czechs love the prince, Lidové noviny summed up the results of a recent STEM survey in which the head of TOP 09 Karel Schwarzenberg and ČSSD Deputy Chair Bohuslav Sobotka both received 51% of votes as the most popular politicians.
>>> You can graduate from the Plzeň Law faculty as early as after a two-month study, said Hospodářské noviny on Tuesday in connection with the recent affair at the faculty where hundreds of students allegedly received their master’s degrees after much less than the required length of study. One of the faculty’s graduates, Chomutov Mayor Ivana Řápková, does not remember the names of the supervisor or opponent of her thesis that she submitted in 2005, Lidové noviny has reported.
>>> J&T Banka wants also the less rich, a Hospodářské noviny headline said on Tuesday in reference to the bank’s new business strategy.
>>> Christmas clearance sales will come before Christmas this year, according to Monday’s Lidové noviny. The first snow fell in Krkonoše last Friday morning. Exceptionally warm weather was breaking temperature records in many places of the country on Wednesday.
>>> Google launched its Street View service for Prague and selected Czech cities on Wednesday. On the same day, Jiří Paroubek held second launch of his book, with no shooting involved this time, Lidové noviny has reported.
>>> “I forbid this man to enter the property of the city of Plovdiv, because I cannot reconcile myself to the mockery of Bulgaria,” said the mayor of Bulgaria’s Plovdiv, Slavčo Atanasov after he cancelled the exhibition of the Czech artist David Černý who depicted Bulgaria as a Turkish squat toilet in his controversial Entropa installation, the daily Právo reported on Wednesday.
>>> Horned cows give better milk, Lidové noviny reported on Friday introducing the new strategy of Agra Zvíkov farm where they have abandoned a 40-year-old generally acknowledged tradition of burning calves’ horns.
